Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana 2017

An outstanding scheme launched for the senior citizens of India under the Central Government is the ‘Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana’. It is a new scheme of ‘Narendra Modi Government 2017’ for senior citizens living below the poverty line (BPL). Under this scheme the government shall offer free living assistive devices like hearing aids, wheelchairs and much more to senior citizens belonging to BPL families, to make their lives a bit easy. The scheme has been implemented at a cost of Rs. 477 Crore and was launched on 25th March at a camp in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district.

The Aim of the Scheme:

The main aim of the Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana is to avail assistive living devices scheme for senior citizens especially older people from economically backward societies.

Old age disabilities like low vision, hearing impairment, loss of teeth and locomotors disability would be attended to through the Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana.

Under the Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana:

The central government has set a target of distributing free assistive devices to at least 2000 people in each camp.

For distributing the devices, the government has organized camps in two districts of each state for the whole year.

The government has state governments to identify receivers for the scheme.

First two camps were organized in two districts of Andra Pradesh.

Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana Camps in Andra Pradesh:

Camp Location

Camp Date

Nellore, Andhra Pradesh

25 March 2017

Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh

26 March 2017

There were several devices distributed in the camp as mentioned above. The list of devices given away is as follows:

Hearing aids

Wheelchair

Walkers

Crutches

Tripods

Spectacles

Dentures

This is only a small list of the devices which were given away by the government. The complete list of devices was made available after the scheme was launched. The devices to be distributed under the scheme were of high quality and abide by the standards laid down by the BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards).

Eligibility Criteria for Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana:

Only the people who are below poverty line and are senior citizen of India could avail the benefits of this scheme. The criteria for eligibility are as follows:

The age of the recipient should be at least 60 years,

The person should be certified as living below the poverty line by a competent authority.

Source: sarkariyojna

As per the SECC-2011 data, there are about 10.38 crore senior citizens in the country out of which 5.2% (About 54 Lakh) of them suffer from some sort of old age-related disability. The number of senior citizens is expected to reach 173 million (17.3 Crore) by the year 2026. In such a scenario, these kinds of schemes are quite beneficial for the people who are encountering disabilities and impairments and do not have enough money to survive through such ailments in their old age.